Few things in gaming culture make me want to burp a baby using the claw end of a hammer than when I see generally decent publishers and developers make a game licensed from a television show, movie, or comic book. Although not all licensed games hurl luke-warm pork in an ashtray all over the gaming culture, a majority of them do. Take for example, the staple butt-end of a joke game, E.T. Or, if you would prefer:

• Tangled
• Tron Evolution
• Hunt for Red October (originally a book)
• Harry Potter
• Jurassic Park
• Space Jam
• Reservoir Dogs
• The Polar express (based on the film that was based on the book)
• Saw
• Krull
• Last Action Hero
• Robocop
• Miami Vice: The Game 
• Transformers: Rise of the Fallen

Most licensed games try to expand a 90-minute movie into 6-7 hours of gameplay, which means the writers and developers abuse the term and privilege of ‘artistic license’ in conjuring up ugly gameplay with sub-literate story lines used connect the main plot points of a mediocre movie with the mediocre plot points in the game (if we’re lucky). In short, the games are an ad that generate increased revenue for both the movie publishers and game publishers but all we get as gamers are a couple of lousy trophies or achievements that prompt the question if our achievement board lists also come in “mens.”

With consideration that justification for the development practice manifests in the game culture’s continual consent to theft of their $60 and 7 hours time, it is no great surprise that the games of this nature see the light of day. Otherwise, game publishers would have rightfully told the movie publishers to piss off by now. They have not, so remember to keep your wallets, er, eyes open for Captain America and Thor, the games, and keep believing that every time you don’t support the onslaught of movie-turned-game titles, Uwe Boll further endangers the Panda Bear species with another game-turned-movie.

I have to admit though, the thought is tempting. I have often wondered what it would be like to play as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho: The Game. Would I ask Jared Leto if he likes Genesis or just kill him outright? Would I have tried harder to feed the ATM a stray cat? What would the chainsaw action sequences as I ran naked down the hallway entail, would I have to hurdle annoyed neighbors or could I kill them too? Indeed these questions keep me awake at night.

Not all licensed games are horrible, some turn out pretty damned enjoyable. Games like Ducktales , Golden Eye 007, Batman Arkham Asylum, and Metro 2033 were awesome games to play because despite the unifying core between the game and its original media, they didn’t rely on the original media to script all aspects of the game. Instead, the games were created with scripts independent enough that the original media was a guideline and advertising the original media wasn’t a major objective.

I am surprised however, at the lack of success in the mono-patterns evidenced in this tiny, flawed facet of the industry because other broad facets of the game industry mimic the same mono-patterns with huge, often nauseating success; FPS shooters are generally all the same:

Crysis 2 was Killzone 3 on earth against Aliens instead of in space against humans. Well, and Killzone was compelling in terms of story, Crysis 2 was just a plot rewrite and redirection to keep the franchise alive and an attempt to unify several dated themes in other FPS titles that previous developers shrugged at because they were dated. Mainly buying Crysis 2 is no different from buying and wearing a Tag Heuer watch just because it is a Tag Heuer watch.

Black Ops was Battlefield 2 except set 40-50 years earlier with a crazy person running around the set of factual wars escaping armies controlled by crazy dictators instead of normal people running around trying to stop the same fictitious war and escaping crazy dictators. Well, and Battlefield 2 was not batshit crazy implausible based on the mixture of settings to the level of Black Ops, and BF2’s multiplayer strengths didn’t give advantage based on connection speed or ruin everyone’s game if the host rage-quit. I will say though,  I half expected a perpetually spinning top to appear while the credits rolled, that way I could feel the game was in some small way the least bit clever. 

Alex Mason, I, Ed Harris, have been chasing your sweaty man-bits through two decades of proxy wars as you’ve killed innumerable people of interest to the U.S. government. I will conveniently forget that this entire fiasco, and nearly all carnage involved, is the result of your delusional schizophrenic sociopathy. The false memories and programming by communist party in-fighters, Gary Oldman and the bad guy from Wishmaster, did contribute yes, but your direct actions ultimately undermine the U.S. government. Now that you’ve spent the better part of three hours wallowing in false memories, confusing players, and killing the wrong people on “accident”, I am going to let you go because we’re being attacked and because the CIA has sudden firm trust in you, it’s what we do – trust people, implicitly even. There will be time later to worry about your mental stability and loyalties, right now take this gun, and kill only the people I tell you. If you do this, I can build a case that proves the false choices I give you mean that you weren't really a schizophrenic sociopath all along but a patriotic schizophrenic sociopath.

(Oh yeah, spoiler alert for the above - guess I should have something sooner).

Dead Space 2 was Resident Evil 5 in outer space that shoved the responsibility of turning otherwise poverty stricken mindless cultists into poverty stricken mindless bio-zombies (which means the change was only physical) on a religion based political faction functioning on corporate agenda, seeking hyper-progressive evolution  instead of an evil version of S.C. Johnson Wax that sought weapons grade progressive human evolution on earth for political control. Well, and Dead Space didn’t utilize annoying assistive AI that depleted the same high-value / low appropriation resources as the player controlled counterpart and lacked a superhuman puppeteer with sunglasses grafted to his face, but at least in Dead Space there was the giant Twizzler to destroy (I hate Twizzlers). In addition, Dead Space had a soundstage and user interface on par with the awesomeness of flaming cyborg unicorns, rainbows that drip blood, and maybe a pack of headless Peeps (which are all pretty freaking awesome), while the UI for Resident Evil 5 was on par with itself.